Corporate Advocacy Program: The best way to manage and repair your business reputation. Hiding negative complaints is only a Band-Aid. Consumers want to see how businesses take care of business. All businesses will get complaints. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from bad businesses.

My husband and myself (we or us hereafter) purchased two (2) of Alpha Multimedia Inc. (the Company hereafter) Communication Kiosks (the Kiosks hereafter) in April 2006 after attending their presentation at a business fair and follow up consultations with their National Sales Manager Marcel Gelineault and customer service representative Mandy Hui at the company's site. We paid a total of CAD $41,400.00, including tax and location fees, from our savings.

We have four major complains so far:

(1)We signed purchasing contract and made the payment in April 2006 but the Company did not find the location for the Kiosks until August, 2006 and one running in late August and the other in September, not in 4-8 weeks as the Company promised in advertisements.

(2)the company failed to live up to its promises of securing National advertisements. The Company's sales campaign was illusive and misleading. What the Company promised was exactly the same as written in the report of Winnifred from Toronto. Alpha Multimedia's advertisement and consultation indicated major business income from National Advertisement (which the Company would take care of) and local advertisement (which the purchaser can solicit by themselves) running on the Kiosks, apart from payment for Kiosk use (to get access to internet, etc) . the Company promised there were advertising campaign going on and they were going to secure national advertisements and we would share part of the revenue, therefore we could get our investment paid back in 12 -14 months even if we do not have any local ads on.

However, after about 16 months since the Kiosks were on, there were NO income-generating ads on our Kiosks. There were two ads running on each of the Kiosks without us signing any consensus (the agreement between us and the Company says before running an ads on our kiosks we would sign a consensus allowing them to do so and we would get share of revenue) and we didn't get any net income from the ads. When we contacted the Company we were told these ads were testers (actually they turned out to be teasers) and they didn't make money on the ads so neither did we.

We contacted their advertising department and customer service several times asking about the status of their advertisement campaign and whether there were new ads contract. We were told time again that there were new ads coming in soon but none of these promises materialized. Alpha Multimedia's manager of advertising department had changed couple of times during this period and each time the new manager blamed the previous one of not doing a good job and kept giving us empty promises of things changing. However, nothing happens. The income we get from the machines up to now is far, far below what they promised.

(3)There are credit card payments on use of these Kiosks, paid to the Company's account and the Company is supposed to send checks to us for these payments. However we have never gotten any of the payments. The amount is now more than $300. Although it is such a small amount accumulated in about 16 months and far less than what was indicated by their sales rep., it is our money. The Company even stopped sending us statements of our account at the end of last year. Despite of our repeated request to the Company's customer service department (Brian D'Eall is our contact at present) through phone calls and emails, the issue is not resolved.

(4)Dealing with the Company's customer service gave us a lot of frustration. It is harder and harder to get to talk to someone in the Company. Especially during recent months we are always greeted by the message machine and rarely get Brian D'Eall or somebody else to call us back. The email response is also sluggish. Apparently Alpha Multimedia is only interested in selling machines and does not care about its customers. We are not alone in feeing this way, according to other reports on this site.

We have filed a complaint with BBB and request our full investment back. We will take this matter further if necessary and are willing to join a class-action lawsuit.

Recap:
The return on the Kiosks the Company claimed in its advertisement is not substantiated because the company failed to live up to its promises of securing National advertisements. The Company's sales campaign was illusive and misleading. Its customer service is poor. We did not get payment for credit card use as promised in purchase contract.

Corporate Advocacy Program: The best way to manage and repair your business reputation. Hiding negative complaints is only a Band-Aid. Consumers want to see how businesses take care of business. All businesses will get complaints. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from bad businesses.